Alex Malarkey's The Boy who Came Back from Heaven pulled after he says he made up the story
Now a teen, Alex Malarkey says he made up his his bestselling story of heaven to get attention
A bestselling account of a six-year-old boy's journey to heaven and back has been pulled after the boy retracted his story saying he had made it up at the time to seek attention.
Spokesman Todd Starowitz of Tyndale House, a leading Christian publisher, said Alex Malarkey's The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven: A Remarkable Account of Miracles, Angels, and Life Beyond This World was being withdrawn.
Earlier last week, Malarkey acknowledged in an open letter that he was lying, saying that he had been seeking attention. He also regretted that "people had profited from lies".
"I did not die. I did not go to heaven," he wrote 10 years after the car accident that led to the book. "When I made the claims that I did, I had never read the Bible. People have profited from lies, and continue to. They should read the Bible, which is enough."
The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven was first published in 2010 and told of a 2004 car accident that left Malarkey in a coma. According to the book, co-written by Alex's father, Kevin Malarkey, he had visions of angels and of meeting Jesus. In 2014, Tyndale reissued the book, which on the cover includes the billing "A True Story". As reported by Nielsen BookScan, which tracks about 85 per cent of the print market, the book has sold nearly 120,000 copies.
The facts of The Boy Who Came Back From Heaven have long been disputed in the Christian community, which has challenged reports of divine visions in Malarkey's book and other best-sellers such as Todd Burpo's Heaven is for Real. One of the leading critics has been Malarkey's mother, Beth. In April last year, she wrote a blog posting saying that the book's success had been "both puzzling and painful to watch" and that she believed Alex had been exploited.